The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation named two Emory English faculty 2026 Guggenheim Fellows. Heather Christle, associate professor of English and creative writing, and Elizabeth Goodstein, professor of English and the liberal arts, are among 223 distinguished individuals across 55 disciplines selected as fellows for their exceptional promise and prior professional achievements.
“A Guggenheim Fellowship is one of the career pinnacles for any scholar or artist, and I am so thrilled that Elizabeth and Heather have been recognized for their achievements. All of us here in Emory College celebrate their success. I can’t wait to see what will come of these honors,” says Joseph Crespino, interim dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences and Jimmy Carter Professor of History.
Christle and Goodstein will receive financial stipends “to pursue independent work at the highest level under the freest possible conditions,” according to the Guggenheim Foundation.
Christle has written five poetry collections, including, most recently, “Paper Crown,” which was published last year. Another collection, “The Trees The Trees,” won the Believer Poetry Award in 2012 and was adapted into a ballet by the Pacific Northwest Ballet.
She has also published two nonfiction books. “The Crying Book,” published in 2019, examines the history and sociology of tears in poetic fragments. “In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf,” published in 2025, weaves Christle’s personal history with the life and works of the influential British writer.
Whether exploring the way information decays across time or the science of cognitive linguistics, the throughline of Christle’s writing is curiosity.
“There’s a sense of ‘What are we going to learn? What are we going to put together?’” she says.
While she has “branched out into prose,” Christle says, “I think that poetry will always be my home.”
Christle plans to use the Guggenheim stipend to return to that home — by working on a new book of poems called “The Downs.”
“It feels like a great honor” to receive a Guggenheim fellowship, she says. “What makes me most excited in all the world is writing. And this means I will have the gift of time to write. So, when I contemplate that prospect, I feel the most alive I can feel.”
She credits her friends and colleagues, especially those in Emory’s Department of English, for inspiration and support. “I feel so lucky to be working and making and thinking as a part of a community of really extraordinary people,” she says.
Goodstein, who is a member of the core faculty in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Psychoanalytic Studies Program, also teaches in the departments of philosophy, history and German studies.
Goodstein is a theorist of modern experience and an expert in practices of interdisciplinary inquiry. Her research incorporates ideas and methods from diverse arts and disciplinary traditions. Her book “Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary” considers the influence and impact of the German sociologist and philosopher.
Much of Goodstein’s work focuses on boredom as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Her first book, “Experience without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity,” puts poets and novelists in conversation with sociologists and philosophers about the topic, helping launch a new field, known as boredom studies. The book, published in 2005, won the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a First Book and the German Studies Association Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Prize.
Goodstein, whose Guggenheim was awarded in the “General Nonfiction” category, will use her stipend to finish a book in progress. “Nothing to Do: Boredom and Change” will explore new formations of boredom in the age of screens and social media.
“There’s a very active production of boredom in 21st-century life,” says Goodstein. “It's part of the way we’re kept in the cycles of consumption and distraction that prevent our engaging more deeply with the experience of boredom and the questions of meaning it raises.”
The new book was inspired, in part, by ongoing conversations with students, most recently while teaching “No Time to Think: Boredom, Distraction and Modern Life” last fall. The graduate seminar explored the cultural, political and philosophical significance of the boredom, anxiety and stress endemic in contemporary life.
Goodstein calls receiving the Guggenheim Fellowship “joyful and such a tremendous honor — which demonstrates how important it is that we continue to cultivate spaces for the kinds of conversations and work that that cross institutional and disciplinary boundaries.”
“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science and scholarship,” says Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. “As the foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”
The Guggenheim Foundation was created in 1925 by U.S. Sen. Simon Guggenheim and his wife, Olga Guggenheim, in memory of their son, John Simon.
The foundation has granted more than $450 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals breaking new ground in the creative arts, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and a range of interdisciplinary fields. Recipients include more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies and winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award and other internationally recognized honors.
Other recent Emory faculty Guggenheim Fellowship recipients include Aubrey Michelle Kelly, associate professor in the Department of Psychology, and Dianne Marie Stewart, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies, in 2025; Cassandra Quave, Thomas J. Lawley, MD Professor of Dermatology and associate professor in Emory School of Medicine and the Center for the Study of Human Health, in 2024; and Tayari Jones, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing, Laura Otis, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emerita of English, and Katherine Young, assistant professor of composition in the Department of Music, in 2021.